The Zentai Project makes it sound like its some sort of hip, performance art-type thing to go around in a full body latex/lycra suit. I remember when we used to just call those people into masking gimps. -- DG

Esquire asks Mary Louise Parker to give up sex for a month. She accepts. Then declines. Then writes about it. Sort of. Seems a bit staged but anything she does or doesn't do is completely forgivable.

See also: giving up the news ("I read novels during my daily commute. I straight-up ignored Chris Matthews. Bliss. Then things got weird") and drinking by Editor in Chief David Granger ("The other hardest thing about not drinking is eleven o'clock"). Smells like the first Esquire feature-turned-book I might even buy--giving up on things as a trend seems like a natural, compelling next step in our excessive "try everything" culture. --FD

Your new favorite Wikipedia entry for the next five minutes: Catullus 16. It's a 1st century BC poem, the first line of which is translated, "I'm gonna fuck you guys up the ass and shove my cock down your throats." [via]

Belle de Jour, the anonymous sex blogger from London, never really became a huge phenom in America. (Most people don't even know that Secret Diary of a Call Girl, the ITV2 show about her, gets replayed on Showtime in the States.) Anyway, she has finally revealed her identity and the best part is that not only is she a she -- but she's a scientist! Dr. Brooke Magnanti, welcome to geekboy adoration.

There's a Grigoriadis profile of Sasha Grey in the new Rolling Stone, which is of course not online, but there's a blog post. The lede of the story:

On an overcast Sunday in Los Angeles, Sasha Grey arrives at a set for the film The Fuck Junkie promptly at 9 a.m. This is not her real name, though it's a subtle one for a porn star, a mash-up of Sascha Konietzko, a founder of the German industrial band KMFDM, and the Kinsey scale of sexuality, which identifies sexual orientation as shades of gray.

Other things we learn:
+ Dave Navaro is her manager.
+ She's engaged.
+ She thinks the Suicide Girls look is now as trite as "the new blondes with bolt-ons."
+ She wants to go on Howard Stern with a Palestinian flag wrapped around her breasts.

The neurochemical version of The Game: NYT Mag's cover story, What Do Women Want? (Okay, not really. This piece kinda rambles, misses on its few points, and could generally use a big structural edit. But there are a few good bits in there.)

Just released: SXSW Panel Picker. Vote for my panel! We'll discuss oversharing, the dangers and benefits of posting your sex life, and the crushing collision between quasi-sex and micro-celebrity. The panelist list will be spectacular! (The panel was Melissa's idea.)

I've often wondered about the legal difference between prostitution and pornography.

It seems an obvious paradox that both acts are essentially the same: sex in exchange for money. However, there is of course one key difference: a camera.

Culturally speaking, this appears to be an extremely revealing detail of the modern psychology. Sex for money is legal only if it's recorded and distributed. The camera, it would seem, validates everything.

But it almost seems like a legal loophole that could be exploited. Imagine this scenario: The vice squad arrests some dude for picking up a hooker. "I wasn't soliciting sex," he claims. "I am making a porn movie." Does his claim to record and distribute the sexual act make it legal? Does he have a First Amendment case? It sounds like a glib question, but it's a legit case!

(Shhh, don't steal my idea, but I want to write a Law & Order script about this. I've already got a title: Get Off The Bang Bus.)

I've talked about this elsewhere, but the tricky part of the First Amendment in the coming years will be answering this question: what constitutes free speech in the age of personal media?

I've ranted about the slippery slope that Josh Wolf, for instance, created by essentially claiming that any act could be constituted as journalism, and hence protected by the First Amendment. If you think about the logical conclusions of that, the danger becomes clear. Would this include corporate security tapes or accidental photos? If journalism is simply saying it is, we're opening ourselves up to some slippery cases. (And don't mistake that remark as fear of actual so-called citizen journalism. That's what I want to make sure we protect!)

There actually is no legal precedent for protecting the creation of pornography, except in California. (Keep in mind that creation and distribution are different.)

Porn creation has never been legally tested in other states, so it might be illegal.

This is why Cali is the porn capital.

The First Amendment will get some tricky questions thrown at it in the coming years, as one of these "personal media" cases eventually trickles its way up the Supreme Court. Given the current makeup of said body, I'm worried what the outcome will be. Sometimes, it may be better to not test the law.

Since I'm sorta notoriously -- or, I'm told, frustratingly -- very good friends with nearly all of my exes, the conversation on Jezebel had me hitting refresh all day Friday. (Off-topic: you think the commenters on Jezebel are hooking up? I'm pretty convinced some are.)

Similar to how it's nearly impossible not to look into Victoria's Secret when passing by on the street, I'm mildly obsessed with the saga of Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis, who has been awaiting trial for eight months without bond from a jail cell. Last year's LAT Magprofile sealed the deal on whether he was despicable (he is), but today's NYT Styles analysis says that conservatives are defending him.

I always thought 30 Rock invented the word vajayjay -- turns out it was Grey's Anatomy. And Oprah pretty much owns it. This and other scintillating details about the origin of the word in today's NYT Styles. (UPDATE: In the comments, at least one previous use of the world. I hope the OED references this post.)

This is goddamn brilliant: CustomReceipts.com. They will print fake ATM receipts with your name and whatever balance you want. Why would you want that? So when you need a piece of scratch paper to write down your phone number for girls at bars.... see! brilliant!

I see survey after survey declare that men have more sexual partners than women. And it annoys me every time, because this is of course statistically impossible. The New York Times finally takes up the issue. The answer? Men aren't more promiscuous -- they lie more. Or, perhaps, women lie by underestimating.

Seattle Weekly strangely gives the large story treatment to cougars -- no, not the ones found in the wild. Although this is purely anecdotal, Seattle seems to have a larger cougar population than most places. (In other Seattle news, H&M is finally coming here, which, at this point, is as exciting as another Target opening. All the girls want a Zara, but Seattle just can't handle fashion -- the REI aesthetic reigns supreme.)

Chris Nieratko is the porn DVD reviewer for Vice, which is all I should need to say about that. His new book (Skinema) collects 150 of the reviews, which is all I should need to say about that too. Except he did an interview with The Stranger, which makes this all sound more interesting than you might guess -- Nieratko doesn't actually review anything; instead, the book is a platform for some crazy confessional memoir.

You wouldn't believe how much time I spent last night looking for videos of Paris Hilton doing drugs -- because I know I've seen them online before! If you haven't heard, she claimed on Larry King last night that she's never done drugs... Liar! I couldn't find the ones of her doing coke, but here she is getting high in Amsterdam. Update from the comments: Of course Smoking Gun has all the entire collection.

My new favorite thing in the world: the Wikipedia discussion pages for porn stars. The actual Wikipedia entry for Jenna Jameson is of minor interest, but the discussion page is full of esoteric debates about her name, ex-boyfriends, a supposed ring finger tattoo, and something to do with "butter and focaccia bread." But that's nothing compared to the discussion page for porn star Peter North, bursting with debates about penis length, ejaculation quantity, an early career in gay porn, and, for some reason, his popularity in Hong Kong.

YouPorn. Yep, exactly what that says too. Except I was intrigued by this idea from Barry at The Big Picture: "There seems to be a burgeoning number of people -- 'Amateurs' in industry parlance -- who have been getting busy videotaping themselves, well, getting busy." Sounds like a trends piece ready to happen.